


and i am not resigned

by drowninglovers



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sex, Introspection, Mentions of Violence, the working title was 'concussion-induced gay hallucinations' and i can't improve on that, too many parentheses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 20:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21482023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowninglovers/pseuds/drowninglovers
Summary: His final thought, in the moment between his face connecting with the table and fully losing consciousness, ishuh, just like Little.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer, Minor Lt Edward Little/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 18
Kudos: 42
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	and i am not resigned

**Author's Note:**

> -you know when you hit your head really hard and because your brain is rolling around in your skull like a bowling ball you just start spiralling back to a) everything you've done and regret & everything you regret not doing b) all the moments in your life that you didn't realize at the time but were really very gay? is that just something that happens to me?  
-for the bingo prompt 'rifle'  
-title from _ dirge without music _ by edna st. vincent millay

Pain blossoms at the base of Solomon’s skull as the rifle makes contact. He wonders, for half a delirious second, if Armitage’s face and half-finished human flesh will be the last things ever sees. His final thought, in the moment between his face connecting with the table and fully losing consciousness, is _huh_, _ just like Little_.

* * *

1.

It wasn’t supposed to end like that, with Little crumpled and bloodied on the shale and Armitage behind him, rifle still halfway raised. It was supposed to be different. Little was supposed to find freedom in the fog's anonymity the way Sol had. Convincing him to open the armoury was easy enough, after all. And Sol couldn’t admit this at the moment, can only admit it now in the privacy of his mind, but he _wanted _ the lieutenant. Not just to come with them, give them a fighting chance. No, he wanted Little the way he was supposed to want Hickey or, at least, the way he did in the beginning.

There wasn’t much to go off of. The few times they shared watch together and would occasionally occupy the same corner of the ship. If Sol was lucky, their shoulders might brush, and they could excuse it by proximity or a need for warmth. Or they'd glance at each other, and he’d hoard these images of Little in the back of his mind for when he needed them. If he tried hard enough, he could imagine a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Little’s a handsome man, but he’d be more so if he wasn’t so bad at masking his despair. A smile and a haircut, civilian clothes and no ice under his boots. The most pathetic part? These fantasies, they're not even fodder for anything. He just wants to believe that there exists a world where none of them are marching to their deaths.

2.

He tried to keep Heather safe, and look where that got both of them. Carnivale taught him two important things, burned them right into his ribs. The first: trying isn’t enough. The second: kindness won’t keep you alive. If he could get as many of his remaining men away from Crozier and his lies and that poisoned bloody food, then maybe that would be enough. It’d be punishing, and if they lived, they’d spit whenever they’d hear his name for the rest of their lives (S_ergeant Tozer, that fucker practically _ begged _ us to mutiny. Drove us like dogs he did, ground down all our edges until there was nothing left but fear and need _) but at least they lived.

3.

Or perhaps it was pure foolishness to believe that Little would end up being anything more than another man at Crozier's beck and call. That's the sort of thing the Navy wants from its men: unwavering loyalty even when facing down the jaws of death. Little probably won't even _die_ until Crozier gives him the order to. Not that he'd be any better off joining up with their group. They're marginally less starving than the rest of the men, but what good does fresh meat do if it's been poisoned for years. The best Little can hope for now is that he either dies before he has to cut into any of his friends (does he have friends? Hodgson and Irving, they must have been close with him, at least out of necessity. But he never struck Sol as overly personable. Respectable, yes, capable, sure, but deeply lonely. Everything comes with a cost) or, he puts it off as long as possible. There's no use in imagining that he will go without a little gristle in his teeth; they're the only prey to be found out here. 

The thing he's most ashamed of, the thought that keeps him up at night, more than cold or illness, and burrows into his brain, is the one thing he can't justify. He can provide reasons for mutinying, can validate cannibalism as a last resort. If needed, he can even justify throwing his lot in with Hickey in the first place, and everything that happened after (that misstep is quite easy to explain, actually. He was desperate, Hickey was persuasive even though he didn't take much persuasion). But here's the dirty little secret he wishes he could forget: even when Little was reading out the charges laid against him, even when he walked toward the gallows, flickering in and out of his vision in the devouring fog, he still wanted him. How stupid is that?

4.

The first time he ventured to the sickbay, he nearly turned around and left as fast as he came. Somehow it was worse seeing Heather like that, alive when he should be dead. Clothes neat, injury hidden behind a curtain, positioned as though he might only be sleeping. It would have been a pretty picture if not for the wax keeping his eyes shut. He understood why. While the dead may rest, their eyes stay open. But Heather wasn’t _dead_, at least his body wasn’t. 

_(“What if he wakes up?”_ _he asked MacDonald even though he knew it was a pipe dream. Surely he of all people would understand. There had to be a reason why he was hanging on like this. If Heather was meant to die by that thing on the ice he would’ve. _

_ But MacDonald had a sad, queer look in his eye. “He might. You’re correct, sergeant, there’s a chance he may wake.” It wasn’t overly convincing. Solomon didn’t need convincing, he needed someone to agree with him. _

_ There was a chance, sure, a one in a million chance that Heather would wake up and everything would go back to normal. The odds were roughly the same as their odds of finding the Passage, or their odds of getting back home. What kind of life could he have if they were to get home? Would it even be worth it?)_

Maybe Heather was lucky, that he was just a body by the end. He wouldn’t have felt anything after the creature ripped his skull open. He was lucky, in the regard, that he got out when he did. 

5.

He and Hickey never kissed. That was the one line they’d never crossed. Sodomy, sure. Mutiny and cannibalism and all manner of other transgressions. But they’d never kissed. If they did, they would have tasted blood from their wasted gums, and that was something Hickey would never abide by. He wouldn’t want to get that close to sickness, to taste it on his tongue. While the rest of them felt their muscles grow soft, their joints grow sharp and their faces gaunt, the rungs and knobs of their ribs and spine sticking out far enough to use as an abacus, Hickey remained whole. He _had_ to be sick, there had to be something eating him from the inside. But if anything was rotting, it didn’t show on the outside. While their hair fell out in clumps, his remained pristine, even glossy. Their skin grew chapped and bitten by the cold, bruises blossoming in clusters after a simple scrape or knock. Solomon has seen every inch of Hickey’s naked body, he knows it is unmarked by disease. A little skinnier maybe, a little leaner. But that’s it. He’s hungry. Then again, they’re all hungry. Maybe kissing was never something Hickey did, with any of his lovers (is that what Solomon is? His _ lover_? That was never the way he considered it, maybe he should have). Did he kiss Gibson when they were together? Before he plunged the knife in? Nelson asked Hardy to kiss him before he died. Sol wonders if he did it, or if Nelson, like Billy Gibson, died unkissed.

6.

Who was the last person he kissed?

It had to have been Caroline, right before...well. Fitting, that the last person he kissed (probably the last person he’ll _ever _kiss) was his wife. That’s the way it ought to be. Caroline deserves that much. Truth be told, she deserved so much more. More life, obviously, but other things too. She deserved a husband who didn’t have one foot at sea and one onshore; it isn’t an easy thing to be a sailor’s wife (Solomon isn’t a _ sailor_. That’s something he’s always been adamant about. He’s a soldier, not some mere AB. Soldier or sailor, he’s gone just as much). He should have kissed her more, told her he loved her more often. There should have been flowers on their table every week he was home and those preserves she liked, the peach ones but only from one specific vendor who they’d always have to haggle with to get the price driven drown. She deserved a family to raise and to live to raise that family.

When she passed (he hates using that term, hates even _ thinking _ it. Caroline didn’t pass. The phrasing implies that it was easy somehow, a quick departure of her spirit leaving behind a beautiful corpse. You want the truth? Her death was awful. It was drawn-out and painful for them both, she’d get better for a spell then even worse. Solomon didn’t leave the house for days for fear of not being there when she passed—that _ damned _ word again. By the time her heart finally stopped she looked, well, she looked quite a bit like how his crewmates look. Gaunt. Wasted. Mangled) he swore he wouldn’t kiss another woman. If only he’d made the same vow about men. Good deal of luck that’d’ve done him. He wishes he could’ve _ known _ at least.

7.

Or perhaps kissing is too intimate for Hickey. He has no qualms about fucking or being fucked, and is perfectly willing (if a little exasperated at times) to allow Sol to indulge in small measures of tenderness—letting Sol gather him in his arms and hold him there like some captured, skittish thing, resigned to his hair being brushed off his face by the back of a roughened hand, pressing an ear to Hickey’s chest when he was on top of him and listening to the triumphant bray of a heart he doesn’t believe is capable of stopping—if it meant obedience in return. Hickey’s a bastard and a rogue and would be executed, dug up, then tried again if they were back on English soil, but he is no fool. He knows what he’s doing when his nimble fingers come up to cup the sides of Sol’s face, tangling slightly in matted curls. He knows that Sol hasn’t been touched like this in years, hasn’t had anyone to take care of him since ‘44. And knows that affection is a currency out here on the tundra.

Hickey wants survival. There’s power in that; even more, if others are reliant on you for it And nobody’s ever clawed their way to a throne without breaking a few necks along the way. However, he can't do this without fealty and if that price is letting Solomon pretend he’s a girl the first half dozen times, then so be it.

_ Mary Ann_, he reminded himself when he saw Hickey strain against his binds, watched sweat pool in the dip of his clavicle. _ He’s still a Mary Ann_, he thought as the cat came down again. Again. Again. _ You’ve seen him, how could he not be? _ Dirtiness. That was one of the charges, and what else could it possibly mean when paired with so many lashes. _ Mary Ann_, _ Molly_, _ Nancy_, all those girls’ names for men like Hickey but whose benefit are they for? The men themselves? Or the men who want to fuck them?

_ Girl, _he thought the first time he held Hickey’s waist, so narrow he could (and did) fit both hands around it easily. Hickey laughed at that—_my, what big hands you have sergeant, _he teased, a slash of moonlight cutting through a hole in the tent. Little Red, meet wolf.

_Just like a woman_, he marvelled as Hickey undid his buttons with a practiced hand. _Quick_ _as a doxy_. A doxy or, perhaps a thief. There's more than one way to earn coin by slipping a well-trained hand in a man's trousers.

It was easy to pretend, with Hickey’s hair falling over his face, and the high reedy noise at the back of his throat, that he was an overeager village girl. _ Maiden_, he wished and tried to conjure up one of his own. No, man. Man. _ You’re having sex with a man, you’ve been having sex with a man, and this isn’t the first time you’ve wanted it._

_ Caroline, _ he allowed himself to indulge on occasion. Not her face or body, or her soft, keening voice. Just her name is enough, her name and the thought of her. _ Caroline, _ he thought, more of an apology than a devotion, when he let himself exhale.

8.

If ever asked, if the God he’s damned to the ends of the earth and back (a curse which loses its bite seeing as how he _ is _ at the ends of the earth) demands reason for letting him through Heaven’s gates—he won’t be allowed, of course, but Solomon will be dead by sunrise tomorrow, he knows well enough how this story will end and is permitted his last rites—he’ll say he was trying to protect his marines. That’s a good excuse, isn’t it? Noble even. At least he believed it in the beginning. Belief is the most important part, even if it doesn’t stick.

9.

Hickey does not feel the chill the way other men do. The rest of them, they bundle up as best they can. There’s another benefit to eating your crewmates besides the obvious: clothing is free for the taking. It’s easier to pretend they’re not falling apart when they’re covered. Solomon can ignore the realities of the body, the realities of _his _body that way. But Hickey exists part king, part god, part man who doesn’t believe in either and he never so much as shivers. Irving’s coat graces his shoulders, twenty-three holes right over his lungs, a victory spoil if ever he saw one. Those greatcoats the officers wear (wore?), they do something to their silhouettes. The marine coats, they’re corseted, dress uniform or not, gives them a flattering silhouette. Solomon’s always been proud of the way he looks in red. An officer’s coat, it should broaden a man up, make him look powerful. With Hickey, it swallows him up. And those boots. Sol doesn’t know _how_ he got them, how he knew where and when to find them, but every man can see the gilded ‘JF’ on the sides. They’re too big for him. He keeps a layer of bandages under his socks, wrapped tight around his ankles. When he changes them every few days, his heels are rubbed raw from days of sliding around inside. Somehow he never falls. He parades around in a stolen coat and stolen boots over his underthings and does not give any indication that he’s anything but warm. He’s always warm, Solomon would know. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw his own naked body. When he and Hickey fuck now, he has as little exposed skin as possible. Only what is necessary. A small hand slipping down the front of his trousers. A sly mouth biting down on his neck. It used to be different. A lot of things used to be different.

10.

Maybe Hickey doesn’t feel the cold. Maybe he doesn’t feel hunger, at least not the same type the rest of them do. The kind that carves out a place in your marrow and the meat of your heart and _gnaws_. Maybe Hickey hungers differently. Maybe he doesn’t feel at all.

* * *

Solomon Tozer spares a moment, a glimpse, a fraction of a second, for the corpses decorating the shale. Pilkington, still in his red coat. Armitage, who followed Sol out here and never blamed him for their misfortune. Golding, where he tried to crawl under the boat before being dragged out. Diggle, with blood down his chin so dark it’s almost black. Hodgson's fine, birdlike features mangled and separated from his body. That would have been Little, had Sol convinced him to come with them. There’s a chance that he’s still out there, ever steadfast, leading the last survivors to a haven that does not exist. A bigger chance still, that he’s just another spent body; another set of bones to be sun-bleached by the time a rescue party comes too late.

Holding a gun is the most natural thing in the world to him. He fits a finger around the trigger and pulls—

**Author's Note:**

> -real life tozer was married to a woman named caroline! i couldn't find any info about when they married but i do know: they had no children & she died in plymouth in 1844. however i haven't seen her death certificate, but insinutating some drawn-out illness isn't too out of the park. (info from 'franklin's men and their families' by ralph lloyd-jones  
-i'm [@nedlittle](https://nedlittle.tumblr.com) on tumblr and [@kitnotmarlowe](https://twitter.com/kitnotmarlowe) on twitter  



End file.
